Dick Johnson forwarded the following thoughts on the late Paul Harvey. -Editor

Radio broadcast legend Paul Harvey died last Saturday, February 28, 2009. We have mentioned in E-Sylum before he was a coin collector. In a newspaper column this week in Sonora, Arizona, near Phoenix where the Harveys had a home and where he died, writers Earl and Mary Ann Runte (onetime ministers to the Harveys) relate a coin parable that was a favorite of the radio celebrity. They wrote:

"I have special remembrance of this great man. One Sunday around the Fourth of July we had a special part in the [church] program in honor of our Country. Along with some patriotic music I read a parable accredited to a historian looking at a penny in the year 2075. That coin was a rare one from his collection.

"The historian wondered what kind of nation the United States was in 1973, the mint date on the coin. The back of the penny was different then. He averred that we must have been an agricultural society  the stems of wheat. A nation concerned about each other  E Pluribus Unum. Metallurgists  the copper coin, and among other things, a religious nation  IN GOD WE TRUST....

"That Sunday in July Paul made his way to the front to ask for a copy of the parable. He was really taken by it. Paul wrote a weekly syndicated column carried by hundreds of newspapers. His column the following week talked about the little white church on the hill above the car wash. He talked of the common people who worshiped there and who live in this unique little town. He talked about the little old lady who walked up the hill on a partially paved street to come to worship.

"He made special mention of the parable  he printed it and finished with IN GOD WE TRUST and the historian's question, 'I WONDER WHAT HAPPENED?' Paul would have liked retelling that coin parable.